Steamboat Pilot & Today

Steamboat Springs — A 20-year-old inmate serving time for stealing an ambulance and assaulting a medic hanged himself in the Routt County Jail Sunday evening.
And one of the people who worked to save Jared Wayne Maynard's life after the hanging was the medic he had assaulted in August.
Maynard was in critical condition when he was flown to Denver Health Medical Center just after 9 p.m. Sunday, Yampa Valley Medical Center spokeswoman Christine McKelvie said.
Maynard was found hanging at about 6:50 p.m. Steamboat Springs police were called to the jail to investigate the incident. Other details were unavailable Sunday. Jail authorities did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Maynard, a former Colorado Mountain College student from Houston, had just started serving an 18-month sentence for first-degree aggravated motor vehicle theft and third-degree assault.
He was attending CMC in August when he jumped into the driver's seat of an ambulance that had responded to the campus. Paramedic Jeanne Power was treating a man in the back of the ambulance when Maynard, who was intoxicated, started driving the vehicle. Maynard grabbed Power by the neck and pinned her against the dashboard when she tried to stop him. Power eventually managed to stop the vehicle by shifting it into park.
Power was a member of one of two ambulance crews that responded to the jail to treat Maynard Sunday. She said she just knew it was him when the call went out.
"I'm pretty shook," Power said when asked about treating the man who had assaulted her. "He made some bad decisions and this was another one."
Jail deputies were working to revive Maynard using cardiopulmonary resuscitation when Power and her colleagues arrived. The medics put a tube down Maynard's throat to clear an airway and continued resuscitation efforts.
A defibrillator, which sends electrical currents into two paddles, had to be used once on Maynard to restart his heart, Power said.
"I was just doing what I needed to do," she said. "We gave him his best chance. People have survived worse."
Maynard was initially taken to Yampa Valley Medical Center before being flown to Denver Health.
Last Thursday, Maynard was sentenced to a year and a half in jail for stealing the ambulance and assaulting Power. After the sentence was handed down, Maynard refused to leave his seat and spat in the face of jail Lt. Fred Johnston as Johnston tried to escort him from the courtroom.
Maynard faces additional charges for the spitting incident.
On Thursday, Maynard's father, William, told the court about his son's struggle with attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity and depression. As he got older, Maynard turned to drugs and alcohol, his father said.